Hour of Prophecy
by Tyanilth
Summary: Sequel to "The Hourglass".  As a world passes from Blight to Thaw, Warden Commander Muirnara Cousland and her husband Loghain Mac Tir find the future held in the hands of three infants, two as yet unborn, for good or ill.  Awakenings timeline.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's note - and at last the sequel to "The Hourglass" begins. Pity it had to start with a rant from Flemeth. But the old bitch just wouldn't shut up.**_

_**The Prophecy of the Architect that she quotes here is from chapter 16 of "The Hourglass" and you won't find it in the game codex. That bit was my own invention.  
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><p><em><strong>Flemeth speaks<strong>  
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_Prophecy. Pah. If that word is not an obscenity in every human language, then it ought to be. The Chantry even tell us, in one of their more meandering writings, that it is "the Maker's mercy that holds down the curtain of the future." A pious piece of poetry that means precisely nothing, as with so many of their writings. But that one perhaps holds more than a grain of truth._

_Did you ever wonder why so many prophets are considered mad, to a greater or a lesser degree? Did you consider that this might even be cause and effect, that there might be something in the nature of prophecy that cannot be handled by a human brain and remain sane? That poor elf that the mad old mage at Soldier's Peak quoted to the Cousland girl - well, he wasn't the first or the last to be driven out of his mind by catching glimpses of what I see all the time._

_So, why wasn't I driven mad? Well, plenty think I am crazy. "That crazy old woman" they call me. Mind you, I never claimed to be sane in the first place. Or human, if it comes to that._

_Oh, but where are my manners? Admittedly you perhaps should have told me your name first, but we will dispense with the niceties here. I have had many names. "The Witch of the Wilds" "Asha'bellanar" "That mad old woman who talks too much." "Flemeth". I suppose you might as well call me Flemeth. It at least has the virtue of being relatively short._

_Now where were we? Oh yes. Prophecy. I was trying to explain it to you. I'm not entirely sure why, because you probably stopped listening five minutes ago. But anyway._

_Let's try an analogy. Like all analogies this one has the advantage of being a pretty picture that you can form in your mind that is almost completely wrong. But this at least gives you something nice to look at while being bewildered._

_Imagine the future as a tapestry. Planned and stitched painstakingly on canvas. You can see the picture develop as the stitches are applied, and you can make guesses about the picture that will emerge. You may be right, or you may be wrong. That patch of blue may indeed be the sky as you think, or it may be the sea, or it may be a fold of a mage's robe, or... Well, you get the picture. Or you don't. Probably you don't._

_But until that tapestry is finished and hung on a wall the picture is uncertain. The only one who knows exactly what is there is the maker of the picture, and she may change her mind a dozen times while executing the design - she runs short of green silk and the picture becomes a golden desert scene rather than a woodland. One line just will not come right, and so she overstitches it and places a spray of flowers in a lady's hand rather than a dagger. Change upon change._

_But what if you were looking at the tapestry as she was stitching, and could see every possibility? Every idea she had and discarded, every colour that changed, every line that altered, and saw them all at the same time? Without any way to judge what really was in front of you? And then someone kept asking you endless questions about the picture?_

_You'd probably go mad. That poor elf at Weisshaupt certainly did. By the end of it all he was trying to strangle anyone who tried to take his toy mabari away to wash it, and he was living on hard boiled eggs because people couldn't poison them. At least that's what he said. Who knows what he was seeing of the pattern by then._

_And the Grey Wardens copied everything he said down faithfully. Most of it was rubbish, pieces of the tapestry long since discarded. But that piece that the Warden Commander was told at Soldier's Peak...well._

_"In the days of the Dragon, thrice damned child of a seven times damned brood,_

_there shall arise amongst the voiceless in the darkness_

_one who is cursed with a voice_

_and he shall cry out to drown the terrible silence that only he hears._

_And the Dragon shall be his companion, and the Dragon shall be his undoing_

_and he shall seek to lead the voiceless from their darkness_

_and shall make himself but the architect of their destruction_

_and both Dragons shall name him betrayer"_

_Oh, it's poetic rubbish, but he had a finger on something there. Because some of that indeed came to pass, and some of it is yet to be but that part of the tapestry is clearer and clearer._

_Better than my attempts at prophecy. Very few of them haven't backfired on me in one way or another. And the worst of it is when you prophesy something that you have seen and watch men then move heaven and earth to avoid it, and bring it about just the same. Very human though._

_And sometimes you only tell half a prophecy. ""Keep him close and he will betray you. Each time worse than the last" I told a young man once, whose tapestry threads could have led him either to a crown or a gallows. I didn't tell him the other half. "And if you don't keep him close, you will not live to know whether he would have betrayed you or not." Never let a prophecy back you into a corner._

_I told another young man in Kirkwall something. Mind you, he didn't understand either. Do you?_

_"We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment...and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap."_

_No. I didn't think you would._

_A pity._


	2. Chapter 2

"Miss Muirna, the girl's pregnant"

The words came in Mistress Malia's usual trenchant tones, from just over Muirnara Cousland Mac Tir's right hip. Since Muirnara was at that moment bent double over a large chest which she was attempting with little success to rearrange in the forlorn hope that the contents of her desk would fit on the top, her reply was muffled. "Sorry, Mistress Malia, could you repeat that?" She straightened up slowly. "Just who are we talking about?"

"Rilissa, my lady. The elf nursery maid. It has to have been one of those Tevinter mages or possibly one of their soldiers, by my reckoning she's about four or five months gone."

Loghain, who had been listening to this in the background, scooped Darrian up from the mat where he had been playing with several crumpled balls of parchment and carried him over to the far side of the room. The toddler's protests were swiftly quelled when he realised that he had been put down with Nut and Hazel, the two Mabari were as always his favored playmates. Muirnara had only managed to catch a swift glance at her husband's face as he moved away but the set expression was one she knew well. Loghain would have to wait though. This needed dealing with first.

Malia went on. "No blame attaches to the girl, my lady, and you might need to speak to her to make that clear because at present she won't stop crying and I can't get any sense out of her. I've told her and told her that your lady mother never dismissed a servant for this and that you wouldn't either, but she seems to think you're going to throw her out as soon as I tell you."

"Of course we won't. I'll talk to her later."

"Good. Miss Muirna, you know your lady mother would have dealt with this long before now, I'm sorry it's taken me this length of time to work out what was going on. The girl was an innocent before those Tevinter bastards - sorry, pardon my Orlesian - took her, and from what she's told me her courses were never regular, not exactly surprising given how thin she was when she came here. I think at first she didn't realise what had happened to her - from what little I've got out of her she was abused by several of them before the Queen sent the money to buy the elven slaves and bring them home. And now she's talking about trying to find herbs to cast it out and I told her not to be such a silly girl, but I don't think that sank in either. I'll stop her doing anything stupid, Miss Muirna, but you need to sort this out."

"I'll sort it out," Muirnara promised. The housekeeper bobbed a half curtsey and turned to go. As usual a final instruction floated over her shoulder. "And don't be late for supper, Miss Muirna." as the door banged shut.

Muirnara had a half smile on her face but it dropped as she turned to face Loghain and their son. Darrian was lying on his back kicking his legs and giggling as Nut licked his feet. Loghain was gazing at the little boy but the unseeing look in his eyes suggested that his mind was not on the picture in front of him. His first words bore that out. "The Chantry never said a truer word than the saying that one sin drags a thousand more behind it. The wrong that I permitted in Denerim's alienage will never end."

"Loghain, that's not true. What could be done to set it right has been done, what consequences are still to be will be dealt with as we find them. You cannot take the blame for all of it."

He did not look at her but he held out an arm as she came to him and they stood together watching the child and the dogs at play. "So if Mistress Malia was telling you that Teyrna Eleanor would already have dealt with this, what would her solution have been?"

"Probably pretty much the same as Teyrna Celia's at Gwaren, I would have guessed."

"Muirnara, do you know that I have absolutely no idea how my wife used to deal with this sort of thing? I'm sure it happened, but whatever she did, she clearly saw no reason to tell me and I never saw a reason to ask."

She shook her head. "Well, I can't remember it happening that often at Highever and when it did, it was usually a young pair of servants who were anticipating their handfasting and didn't wait. In which case she generally had a word with both sets of parents, and they had a word - or several very loud words - with their offspring, and the wedding got moved forward in a hurry. Clearly not a solution in this case."

He nodded. "So what happened if a swift wedding was out of the question? If the woman had been forced, or the man couldn't be found?"

Muirnara frowned. "It happened twice. Once with a young girl who got seduced by a visiting pedlar and once with a woman who was raped by a drunken man at arms."

"What did your mother do then?"

"She offered them both a choice. As far as I remember the woman who was raped chose to go to one of the family's outlying manors and have the child there and a quiet adoption was arranged. With the other girl, Mother talked to some of the servants and found someone who was prepared to take the girl to wife, she gave her a dowry and stood godmother to the child. She told me she considered that to be the best possible outcome, to find an older man who would at least be kind to the girl and kind to the baby, it gave the girl a husband and the child a father. And if it wasn't exactly a fairy tale ending, well, we don't live in a fairy tale."

"My respect for your mother grows the more that I learn about her." Loghain considered. "The man who raped the woman...what happened there?"

Muirnara's face was grim. "He was one of Howe's soldiers. Father had him publically flogged and then turned him over to Howe's commander to be taken back to Amaranthine. As to what Howe himself did then, the Maker only knows. Probably promoted the bastard."

Loghain shook his head. "I wish I could say you were being over dramatic, but..." He bent down and tickled Darrian's foot, his son giggled. "I wonder what the girl herself wants to do."

Muirnara shook her head. "Well, one thing she isn't going to do is try to cast forth the child. Even if it was remotely safe still to do it - which it isn't, not at four or five months. I'll talk to her later, if I can without sending her into hysterics."

Loghain paced in front of the hearth. "The one thing we need to do is keep the whole thing very quiet. If the Chantry get so much as a clue that the father of this child was probably a Tevinter mage, then..."

"Very true. Mother used to say that the last thing you ever wanted to do was get the Chantry involved in anything, because they could be absolutely guaranteed to make a bad situation worse, no matter what they did."

"Now I know where you get your cynical streak from, wife. It certainly wasn't Bryce."

She gave a half smile and changed the subject. "I don't know how on earth I'm ever going to get the rest of this packed by tomorrow. This room alone would take half the night."

"Then don't. Malia and the other servants will be down here for a week yet, they can finish packing during the week and everything we don't take with us tomorrow can be brought to Amaranthine by ox cart. Once we've seen how things stand there, we'll know how much else needs to be moved anyway."

Muirnara sighed. "I know. I don't much like the fact that we haven't heard anything in the last sevenday or so - in fact more, I think the last letter from Kristoff was nearly three weeks ago. I know if there had been a major disaster there we would have heard, but..."

"You worry too much."

"So you keep telling me."

"Try believing it." Loghain looked at her with a half smile on his face. "I spent most of my life worrying about things, and look where that got me. Settle for leaving tomorrow's problems for tomorrow. The only thing you need to worry about tonight is just what I might have planned for you once supper is over and Darrian is safely in bed."

She gave him a smile. "Oh, is this something I ought to be worrying about?"

He kissed her neck. "That, my dearest wife, is entirely up to you."

"All right. Now I'm worried."

He laughed and scooped Darrian up. "I'll take him to Malia, and you can go and seek out Rilissa. The girl still gets tongue-tied as soon as she sees me, I don't thing that there's anything I can add to the conversation that is going to be helpful."

He bore the little boy out of the room and Muirnara gave the desk a baleful look, then wandered over towards the fireplace. Somehow it seemed that the months since the Blight ended had brought problem after problem in their wake and very few had been the sort of problems that could be dealt with by pointing a sword at them. There had almost been a time where Mistress Malia's fussing over her as the five year old child she remembered rather than the grown woman and Warden Commander that the child had become had been welcome, a memory of a time when problems could be put into the lap of someone else. But that sort of remembered peace never lasts, and while throughout the Blight she had felt herself to be shouldering her father's mantle of war, in peace she seemed more and more to be stepping into her mother's shoes.

_And just how Mother actually managed to juggle all this and make it look easy is completely beyond me_

She shook off the thought. Once they got to Amaranthine and took stock of what was going on there things would surely settle down a little, however little Amaranthine nobility might like the Arl and Arlessa that the Landsmeet had given them.

_At least from what Kristoff said in his last letter, the common people seem to be delighted that their new rulers are the Hero of River Dane and the Hero of Ferelden. I'm starting to know just how much Loghain hated that title. But also Kristoff seems to think that Amaranthine is generally of the opinion that anything's better than a Howe. So hopefully the early mistakes we make will at least be treated with tolerance._

And then of course there were the Joinings that they had to perform once they got there - the knight Mhairi and the elven archer Theron Mahariel. With Avernus returned to Soldier's Peak and Kristoff in Amaranthine there had been nobody left who knew enough to prepare the Joining ritual and they had had to postpone the Joining of both recruits until the move to Amaranthine. In one of his letters from Vigil's Keep Kristoff had mentioned that the Seneschal there also knew of the ritual despite not being either a Warden or a mage. Muirnara firmly intended that this particular "secret" was going to be taught to all her senior Wardens as fast as possible, there was never again going to be a time when the only two Wardens left in a country had no knowledge of how to make more!

_Right, that's enough of that. Loghain's right, worrying over and over about tomorrow when there's nothing I can do about it is fruitless. I'm just putting off talking to Rilissa because I don't know what to say to her. What can I say to her except that whatever she decides we will care for her, and for her child, and we will not cast either of them out? That's not nearly enough._

"What isn't nearly enough, cara mia?"

She jumped and turned round. "Zevran, you startled me."

The elven Warden laughed openly. "Then your observation tonight is poor, cara mia. I did not exactly sneak into the room, you know."

"I was thinking of something else, Zev."

"That young elven girl, I assume?"

She frowned. "Don't tell me that this is already gossip around here. I will be very annoyed if that is the case."

"No, cara mia, but I am not blind. The girl is eating almost nothing and yet she is frequently sick in the mornings, and there is something in her face, a drawn quality...it is recognisible if you know what to look for. And you were talking to yourself when I came in and some of what you said included her name, it was not hard to deduce the rest."

She sighed and sat down in a chair. "I have to talk to her, Zev, find out what she wants to do, and I don't know what to say to her."

"What you said sounded good to me, my friend. That you will care for her, that you will care for her child, that you will respect her wishes. That is better than many women face in the same situation." His face was shadowed and Muirnara wondered of whom he was thinking. "Come, we will go and find her. It may be there there are a few things that I can say to her as well - for all that she may find little that she wants to say to a man, I am also an elf, and I know perhaps more than you may think of the situation she has been in, growing up where I did, and how I did."

There were questions there she was burning to ask and did not dare. She nodded and got to her feet. "You're a good friend, Zev."

"I am an even better lover, cara mia, but since you have never let me demonstrate that, I will settle for being a good friend. There are far worse things in life to be."


End file.
